Meet the Speakers

Raised in Fairborn, Ohio, Debi received her undergraduate degree in Social Work from Wright State University and Graduate Degree in Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Debi’s 30+ years of experience in nonprofits has been rooted in community cultural development and cultivating environments of belonging.

Kevito Clark is the Founder of Love, Peace & Games: Play It Forward, a 501(c)(3) that facilitates free and donation-based community programming throughout Los Angeles. Love, Peace & Spades™ answers the calling for the increased need for third spaces that promote health, wellness, and the preservation of Black Family Heirlooms (i.e., Spades, Tunk/Tonk, Bid Whist, Dominoes). Love, Peace & Spades™ has served as a hush harbor, hosting over 6,000 attendees in less than two years, and has gone on to be recognized in the L.A. Times, Travel Weekly, Fox 11, KCAL News, and more. Kevito and his team have successfully created a space for intergenerational communion and education through gameplay by forming relationships with local Black-owned businesses, educators, game designers, and more. Community members have their very own Love, Peace, and Spades™ experience at The Line Hotel every first Wednesday from 6 to 11 PM.

Juanita-Michelle Darden is a dynamic entrepreneur, educator, and community leader based in Dayton, Ohio. As the owner of Third Perk Coffeehouse, Soul Food Carryout, and Darden Development, she has established herself as a driving force in the local business landscape. Her ventures are a reflection of her commitment to excellence, community engagement, and the creation of generational wealth.

With a background in education, Juanita has seamlessly blended her passion for teaching with her entrepreneurial spirit, empowering others through mentorship and business development. Her coffeehouse, Third Perk, was known as a beloved community hub for nine years, offered not only quality beverages but also a space for connection and creativity.

Juanita’s entrepreneurial journey is rooted in her desire to live life to the fullest while creating opportunities for others. As a “perky chic” with a zest for life, she is dedicated to building multimillion-dollar businesses that allow her to enjoy the life she desires as a lady of leisure. Her influence extends beyond her businesses, as she is an advocate for mental health, strong relationships, and the empowerment of future entrepreneurs.

Her vision is not just about personal success but about leaving a lasting legacy that benefits her family and community. Juanita Michelle Darden is a true testament to the power of hard work, resilience, and the pursuit of one’s passions.

Follow Juanita-Michelle on:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/broken_entrepreneur?igsh=MmVlMjlkMTBhMg==

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dreamdriven2017?mibextid=LQQJ4d

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@thebrokenentreprenuer6266?feature=shared

www.thirdperk.biz

Visit the sweetest corner of Dayton, Ohio at 3907 West Third Street, the Soul Food Carryout and Perk Up On 3rd.

Dayton native and longtime art enthusiast, Ed Dixon opened the Edward A. Dixon Gallery in the Fall of 2017 in Downtown Dayton, Ohio.

Exhibition themes at the gallery have included We’re Doing It ALL Wrong , JOY (That’s Just What I needed) and 2024 FotoFocus Biennial: backstories.

Ed has sought to build comfortable and inviting environments for all level of art enthusiasts in his various gallery locations. Making the connection between the general public and visual arts is his number one goal for the Edward A. Dixon Gallery. The gallery is located at 222 St. Clair St. downtown Dayton.

Tama Hamilton-Wray, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University, and an independent filmmaker. Her interdisciplinary research and teaching interests include Black independent and global African cinemas, Third Cinema theory, Black feminist cultural production, and Black feminist theory. She is co-editor and contributor to New Directions in the Study of the African Diaspora: Uncharted Themes and Alternative Representations. Her work appears in the Journal of African Cinemas, Midwest Miscellany, and Raoul Peck: Power, Politics, and the Cinematic Imagination. Her newest film, The Third One, is in post-production; other select films include, Songs for My Right Side, The Evolution of Bert, and China. She is co-founder and co-director of Sister Circle Mentoring Program.

Lungs Project is a curatorial non-profit and independent publishing press founded in 2016. Operating between the US and the UK, Lungs Project is established as a transnational platform to promote the work of early career artists and writers from chronically underrepresented backgrounds. The project focuses on building a nourishing, collaborative community of artists and writers by merging contemporary art, design, and literature to prompt a cross-disciplinary dialogue.

Crystal Michelle is a choreographer and performer from Augusta, GA who lives and creates in Ohio. She is a Princess Grace Choreography Honoraria recipient, Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award winner, and a New American Dance Residency awardee. Her works explore identity through African American movement dialects and Black feminist practices in contemporary dance. Crystal’s work has been seen on stages in Kazakhstan, Russia, Brazil, and across the United States.  Recent commissions include Ballet Memphis, South Chicago Dance Theatre, Dublin Arts Council, and Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (DCDC). Her choreographic research interests include the transmission and preservation of Black voices in dance, the African diaspora in the American south, Black female identity, and autoethnographic performance. Crystal continues her choreographic work as an Associate Professor of Dance at The Ohio State University (OSU) and as Associate Artistic Director andd choreographer at DCDC. She holds an MFA in Dance from OSU and a BFA in Dance Performance from Southern Methodist University.

Shannon Shelton Miller is an associate director of news and communications at the University of Dayton and editor of The Dayton Anthology (2020), part of Belt’s City Anthology series. Shelton Miller is an award-winning writer with more than two decades of experience in journalism and communications, working for 10 years at the Orlando Sentinel and Detroit Free Press before moving to higher education communications and freelance writing. A Detroit native and daughter of the Midwest, Shelton Miller earned bachelor’s degrees in journalism and social relations from Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, and a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Her essay “I’m From Detroit,” appeared in The Detroit Anthology in 2014.

Rodney Veal is a Producer and Community Arts liaison for ThinkTV, and CET Connect is an independent choreographer and multi-disciplinary artist who served as adjunct dance faculty at Stivers School of the Performing Arts and Sinclair Community College. Rodney is a graduate of Eastern Michigan University with a B.S. in Political Science and Visual Arts. He received his M.F.A in Choreography from The Ohio State University. Rodney serves on the Board of Trustees of Ohio Dance as  President and on the boards of Levitt Pavilions Dayton, Dayton Performing Arts Alliance, Westcott House, HomeFull, Dayton Live!, and the community advisory board of WYSO.

Jeffrey C. Wray is a Professor of Film Studies and Timnick Chair in the Humanities at Michigan State University. An independent filmmaker, recent films include Songs for My Right Side, a 2020 half-hour drama and BLAT! Pack Live, a 2016 musical documentary. His 2014 feature film The Evolution of Bert premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival and was nominated for the Roger Ebert Award.

Screenplays include the dramas Welcome to Idlewild and The Soul Singer, a 2018 Nicholl Academy Award Screenwriting Fellowship Quarterfinalist, as well as Eclipse, a political drama set in the turbulent summer of 1964. Essays “How Ella Mae Wray Seized the Opportunities of 1968” and “Ella Mae: The Personal and Political,”were published in The Atlantic and Black in the Middle: An Anthology of the Black Midwest.

Terrion L. Williamson is an associate professor of Black Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, where she is also the director of the Black Midwest Initiative. She is the author of Scandalize My Name: Black Feminist Practice and the Making of Black Social Life (Fordham University Press, 2017) and the editor of Black in the Middle: An Anthology of the Black Midwest (Belt Publishing, 2020). Her research and teaching specializations include black feminist thought, black women’s literature, black cultural studies, midwestern studies, and racialized gender violence, and her work has been featured in a variety of public and academic outlets. Born and raised in Peoria, Illinois, she is currently working on a book that centers the case of nine black women who were killed in her hometown between 2003 and 2004.

Anita Armstead is the founder and visionary behind Eden’s Harvest, a 3.5-acre regenerative urban farm in Northwest Dayton, and co-founder of Resilient Roots Doula, an organization aimed at improving Black infant and maternal health as well as decrease health inequities in infant and maternal mortality rates in African-American community one birth at a time. As an herbalist, birth and postpartum doula, certified lactation specialist, and urban farmer, Anita seeks to empower community members to reclaim their health and well-being by fostering their connection to God and the land while gaining agency over the quality, production, and distribution of the food they consume. Her vision encompasses creating healing green spaces that promote food sovereignty and community wellness. She is a compassionate and dedicated mentor and community leader with a deep intellectual fire and drive to manifest the vision for community wellness that has been planted within her. Anita has completed a Regenerative Agriculture Fellowship and coordinated the Regenerative Farming Fellowship, and is an active member of the BIPOC Farming Network, driving positive change in the Black community.

I started my professional career in 2018 with Loc8NY as a floor protection technician. I quickly worked my way up the ladder becoming the Executive Assistant to the President of the company. In this role, I served as the Assistant to the Producer on some of the biggest live productions in New York City. This includes the ESPY Awards, the Soul Train Awards, and New York’s first live production during the pandemic, the 2020 MTV VMAs.

In 2022, I started a role as a Production Assistant on an Unannounced Marvel Studios project. Within my first month on the project, I was tasked with assuming the additional responsibilities of assisting the Showrunner/EP. In this role I would continue until the end of the show in 2024.

I am always looking to bring my passion to high quality projects. I am experienced in many types of media including animation, live tv, narrative, and documentary. My organizational skills, attention to detail, and personable nature are all traits that I will bring to your next project.

Basim has worked in the media for over twenty years, as an A&R rep with Capitol Records and as a morning drive show producer. He is a filmmaker, media arts adjunct, and also a digital editing teacher in the Dayton Metro area. In 2012 he joined WYSO as a Community Voices Producer, and his work has earned him a “New Voices” Scholar award by (AIR) Association of Independents in Radio. Basim has produced the award-winning documentary Boogie Nights: A History of Funk Music in Dayton. He also served as Project Manager for ReInvention Stories, a multimedia docu-series produced by Oscar-winning filmmakers Steve Bognar and Julia Reichert. In 2020, Blunt received a PMJA (Public Media Journalists Association) award for his WYSO series Dayton Youth Radio, for which he is the founding producer and instructor. Basim spins an eclectic mix of funk, soul, and classic R&B on his upcoming  “Behind the Groove” podcast that will feature some of his most popular interviews with Dayton Funk legends.

Dr. Scot Brown is a historian of African-American history, popular culture, and music. He is the author of Fighting for US: Maulana Karenga, The US Organization and Black Cultural Nationalism, and contributing author and editor of Discourse on Africana Studies: James Turner and Paradigms of Knowledge.

Dr. Brown’s writings have also appeared in Liner Notes, Issues in African American Music, Journal of Black Studies,  Black Scholar, Freedom North, Malcolm X: A Historical Reader, Journal of African American History, Black Los Angeles, American Studies Journal, Africana Methodology, Langston Hughes Review, and The Dayton Anthology.

Beyond academia, he has contributed to articles in major media outlets such as New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Ebony Magazine, EURweb, Fresh: Hip Hop and R& B, The Hype Magazine, Oprah Magazine and USA Today. Dr. Brown’s experience — as an independent musician, producer, and songwriter – deeply informs his research. His original compositions are featured on most digital music platforms.

Professor Brown is also completing a book project examining 1970s R&B and funk bands and has interviewed a myriad of legendary groups – including: The Ohio Players, Bootsy’s Rubberband, Zapp, Heatwave, Slave Lakeside, Sun, The Isley Brothers, Faze-O, Shadow, Dazz Band, Midnight Star, Parliament/Funkadelic, Cameo, Platypus, Mtume, The Time, Aurra, Dayton, Steve Arrington’s Hall of Fame and many others.

Given the breadth of his insight, Dr. Brown has frequently appeared as an expert commentator for television and radio programs on National Public Radio (Paying Tribute to Funk’s Sugarfoot Bonner), Sirius/XM Radio (Joe Madison Show), BET/Centric (Being – Dionne Warwick), PBS (Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution and Blackademics Television), TV One (Unsung –episodes: Heatwave, The O’Jays, The Spinners, The Ohio Players, Midnight Star, DJ Quik, Lakeside, Patrice Rushen and Mtume), VH1 (Finding the Funk) and most recently on Cinemax (Tales From the Tour Bus – episodes: James Brown and Bootsy Collins) and Euronews. He recently served on the Advisory Council for the Academy Award-winning film Judas and the Black Messiah, and will appear in the upcoming documentary series, Breaking Black on OWN/Discovery networks, executive produced by Tina Knowles-Lawson. Dr. Scot Brown is dedicated to the historical preservation, cultural exploration, and production of music with positive themes. For these reasons, he founded Dr. Scot Brown’s Musikverse in 2020. Dr. Scot Brown’s Musikverse blends music and scholarship to encourage education and promote thoughtful cultural analysis and discourse.

J Coley, PhD (they/them) is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Lender Center for Social Justice at Syracuse University. As an urban sociologist and public scholar, their research examines the lived experiences of Black and Brown people experiencing gentrification and other housing market pressures. Coley’s current program of research uses qualitative methods to address how race informs experiences of neighborhood change in historically Black neighborhoods in mid-sized cities.

Tara L. Conley is a filmmaker, artist, and professor in the School of Media and Journalism at Kent State University in Ohio. Her work bridges media studies, Black feminist studies, digital humanities, ethnography, and documentary, with a focus on telling Black stories from the rust belt and across the diaspora. Dr. Conley’s innovative research and multimedia productions reflect her commitment to amplifying Black voices and highlighting lesser-known stories of Black life. Discover more of her scholarly and creative works at taralconley.org.

LaShawnda Crowe Storm is an artist, activist, community builder and occasionally an urban farmer. Whether she is making artwork or sowing seeds, Crowe Storm uses her creative power as a vehicle for dialogue, social change and community healing.

At the core of Crowe Storm’s creative practice is a desire to create community; any community in which the process of making art creates a space and place for difficult conversations around a variety of topics, with an eye to community healing. In her words, “If life were a photo, then my artwork would be the film negative, seeking to explore those aspects in our society that have been ignored or forgotten.  By printing these negatives, I give voice to the marginalized and disregarded aspects of our society.”

Crowe Storm has an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a B.A. in mass communications and English Literature from the University of Michigan. She has received numerous awards for art and community activism including but not limited to a MdW Fellowship, Power Plant Award, De Haan Artist of Distinction Award, Art Place America National Creative Placemaking Award and Creative Renewal Fellowship.

Alexis Diggs is an independent artist from Dayton, Ohio. Some of her most recent choreographic works, “For There to Be Light…” and “Heavenly Bodies” premiered in Sarasota, Florida, and New York City, respectively, as a part of Sarasota Contemporary Dance Company’s “Voices” and Doug Varone’s “Devices 7” showcase. She has also created works on DCDC and DCDC2, Miami Valley Dance Center, Miami Valley Ballet Theater, and Canton Ballet.

Lex’s dance experience encompasses modern, jazz, contemporary, ballet, and African training; these styles influence her choreographic voice and teaching style. Additionally, she possesses a classical training background in both piano and voice. Her most recent performance experience was “Sleep Sirens” with Dayton Dance Initiative at TEDxDayton and Cincinnati Arts Museum’s Black Futures Now Capstone under commissioned choreographer Countess V. Winfrey (2022). She is currently on the teaching faculty at Miami Valley Ballet Theater and Jeraldyne’s School of Dance.

Kisha Nicole Foster lives in Cleveland, and is the recipient of the 2019 Cleveland Arts Prize for Emerging Artist in Literature. Foster is an alumnus of Cleveland State University-BA English, and holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Foster is the author of Poems: 1999-2014 and Bloodwork (Outlandish Press). Her work has appeared in Black in the Middle – An Anthology of the Black Midwest (Belt Publishing). Foster’s poems are celebrated as public art on buildings in Cleveland with gratitude to her partnership with Building Bridges Arts Collective. They are located in Cleveland and reside at the Oriana Houses’ Community Based Correctional Facility building on East 55th and their headquarters on Hough. Her spoken word album BLK (black) Earth: SPK (speak) Poems can be found on Bandcamp. Foster is currently a Room in the House Fellow at Karamu House.

Tia-Simone Gardner is an artist, educator, and Black feminist learner. Her hybrid practice enacts the Black geographic, long histories—some documented, some not—between black folks and the fabricated environment. Gardner grew up in Fairfield, Alabama and received her BA in Art and Art History from the University of Alabama in Birmingham. In 2009 she received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Practices and Time-Based Media from the University of Pennsylvania. She participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program as a Studio Fellow and has been an invited artist at a number of national and international artist residencies including the Center for Photography at Woodstock, A Studio in the Woods, and IASPIS Sweden. She was awarded a number of fellowships including a recent Smithsonian Artist Fellowship in 2020. In 2018, Gardner received a Phd in Feminist Studies from the University of Minnesota where she completed a practice-based dissertation on Black folks, mobility and the history of small (now tiny) house practices, titled: ‘Sensing Place: HouseScale, Black Geographies, and a Humanly Workable City.’ She’s currently working on a project about Fairfield, her elders, and the geologic time that made her home(town) a profitable racial landscape for the US Steel. Alongside this work, she continues to teach and develop projects related to rivers, particularly, the Mississippi River, and maritime history through her work on a series of floating camera obscuras, developing a practice of social photography.

april l. graham-jackson, PhD is a proud third-generation Black Chicagolander and former music journalist whose research explores how geographic development, racial capitalism, sub\urban migration, and music and sound shape Black identity in the Chicago Metropolitan Area known colloquially as Chicagoland. Her work broadens the geographic, migrational, and generational scope of Black American life beyond “the urban” by examining the placemaking practices and spatial imaginaries of Black people who developed Black sub\urban cities, villages, and neighborhoods in the South Suburbs of Chicago in the post-Reconstruction and post-Civil Rights eras. april documents the geography of intraracial relations within Black American communities and how Black people express feelings of belonging, strangeness, and a Black sense of place across urban-regional landscapes. Dr. graham-jackson has published in The Professional Geographer, Music and Science, and the Journal of Urban Affairs. She is the founder of the Black Geographies Graduate Student Conference and Chair of the Black Geosonicologies Research Group.

april is also developing her undergraduate honors thesis: Still Sweatin’…Mapping House and Black Bodies: Place-Making in the Black House Music and Cultural Community of Chicago into a manuscript. Her thesis examined the placemaking practices of the Black house community in Chicago and the ways they exerted their social, cultural, and geographic power and (re)claimed space | place in Chicago through the formation of house music, house culture, and what she termed, “house geographies.” Before returning to academia, she worked as the Executive Editor of the popular hip hop blog KevinNottingham.com and as a freelance writer for the Chicago Defender, Hip Hop DX, Soul Train, and other multi-media outlets. She has interviewed Aretha Franklin, Common, Outkast, Chaka Khan, Bob James, and many other artists.

Dr. graham-jackson is a Department of Sociology Postdoctoral Scholar and Mansueto Institute Fellow at the University of Chicago. She is also a Postdoctoral Research Affiliate with Chicago Studies, the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization, and the Urban Theory Lab at the University of Chicago. april graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Mount Holyoke College as the first person with a bachelor’s degree in Black Geographies and from the University of California, Berkeley with a PhD in Geography. She is also rooting for everybody Black, especially Black women, Black LGBTQIA+ folks, the Black house kids, Black Chicagolanders, Black weirdos, and every Black person navigating anxiety and depression. You can find april musing at BlackChicagoland.com.

A native of Dayton, Ohio, Keyboardist and vocalist Keith Harrison was the leader of Faze-O and co-wrote one of the band’s biggest hits, “Riding High”.  Riding High is one of the top 10 most sampled songs by many rap artist such as Kriss Kross, Snoop Dog, Ice Cube, EPMD, Ghost Face Killah, Red Man, and Devon The Dude, just to name a few and can be heard in several movie soundtracks. Keith was also a former member of Heatwave.

Keith became a member of The Dazz Band in 1983-1993, and recorded and performed on six Dazz Band albums. Keith returned to the Dazz Band in 2020. Keith’s writer, producer, arranger, and performance credits include: Faze-O, Heat wave, Dayton, Dazz Band, Jeff Lorber, Ray Parker Jr., Ohio Players, George Clinton P-Funk All Stars, Lo-Key, Sprite Coca-Cola, and Morris Day and the Time.

He has performed on top-rated syndicated television shows like Solid Gold, Soul Train and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Keith has been the recipient of many prestigious awards including; The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences Grammy Award, Emmy Award (Dazz Band), The Ohio Valley Gospel of Excellence Music Award, The Ohio Valley Legends In Music Award, Peoples Key to The City Award, and had the honor of performing at the BET Presidential Inaugural for former president Bill Clinton.

In 2016, Keith was inducted into the R&B Hall of Fame with the Dazz Band, and in 2016, he was inducted into The Dayton Walk of Fame.

I am a Black Chicagoan, photographer, and Ph.D. Student in the African American Studies Department at UC Berkeley. My research examines the value of Black, working-class men within the post-industrial labor market in the Calumet Region of Northwest Indiana through the intersection of race, class, gender, and geography. Focusing on Gary, my work investigates how Black working-class men thrive and build community within hyper-masculine spaces of socioeconomic marginalization in the wake of the Great Recession of 2008. Methodologically, I utilize oral history interviews and visual ethnographic practices that disrupt narrow representations of Black life in the Calumet Region.

I am a music producer and co-founder of the Grammy-certified production duo Tensei whose music has been featured on the South Side on Max and The Blacklist on NBC. I am also the principal photographer for a multimedia project exploring the sociosonic, music, and visual textures of Black life in Chicagoland.

Cynthia Johnson, vocalist, songwriter, and health advocate, is best known as the lead singer of the band Lipps Inc., whose smash hit “Funkytown” was number one in 28 countries, sold more than 35 million copies worldwide, and earned a place in music history as one of the top Disco songs in the world and continues to influence popular culture. Johnson has continued her musical career and remains active as a member of the three-time Grammy Award-winning Sounds of Blackness, performs on projects for Grammy-winning producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and has worked on commercials for 3M, Volkswagen, Nissan, Target, FedEx, Ford, and many more.

Prior to her Lipps Inc. career, Johnson became well known locally for being the lead vocalist of the well-known Minneapolis band Flyte Tyme.  An accomplished saxophone player, Johnson utilized her saxophone skills in Flyte Tyme and wrote many of the band’s songs. While Johnson attended the University of Minnesota, Morris, 1974, she continued to perform with Flyte Tyme for a brief time. Johnson went on to lead Lipps Inc. while Flyte Tyme eventually become The Time. Today, Johnson continues her career as a performing artist, is a health food advocate, operates a community choir called United Praise and continues to write her memoir, From Funkytown to Higher Ground.

Ohio Governor’s Award recipient, poet, and playwright Sierra Leone is serving as the Kettering Foundation’s first artist-in-residence through fall 2025. Leone’s work with Kettering’s Democracy and the Arts focus area encompasses collaborations with all of the foundation’s work.

Leone is the executive director and cofounder of the Home of Urban Creative Arts. For over a decade, Ohio has benefited from her vision of creative urban arts as a potent artistic medium to bridge communities across racial, cultural, ideological, and economic gaps. She has also significantly impacted youth through her work with arts organizations, schools, and neighborhoods via her company’s educational arm, Signature Educational Solutions. Leone is committed to ongoing growth and learning, as exemplified by earning an MBA with an emphasis on project management and an MA in applied behavioral sciences, which heavily influenced her work and study of culture and behavior through the lens of the creative process and activism. She is currently one of four artists commissioned to develop and design the Seed of Life Memorial, which will commemorate the victims of the 2019 Dayton Oregon District shooting.

Leone’s understanding of the relationship between arts and activist communities will support Kettering’s work to affirm and advance inclusive democracy through the arts. Throughout the residency, she will work with local artists and arts organizations on Kettering’s Civil Rights Dayton initiative, including developing a curriculum and leading a music and arts summer camp for teens at Levitt Pavilion. Leone will also conduct workshops at the EboNia Gallery for artists participating in an exhibition curated by Bing Davis and work with The Human Race Theatre Company on a participatory project based on stories about belonging that have been shared by community members.

“Many of us often don’t see the connections between democracy and our daily lives,” said Joni Doherty, senior program officer for Democracy and the Arts. “Sierra is an artist who makes democracy personal and tangible, both in her work and through her connections with people.”

Kettering Foundation president and CEO Sharon L. Davies said, “We are delighted to have Sierra work with the foundation as its inaugural artist-in-residence. We welcome the opportunity to engage with her ideas, insights, and experiences as we all work toward a deeper understanding of how to advance inclusive democracy.”

Dr. John C. “Turk” Logan, Jr. is a 52-year veteran of RADIO/TV Broadcasting. An Inductee into the Broadcasters Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio (9/09). Dr. Logan is retired as General Manager of WCSU-FM (“Your Urban/Jazz Connection”12/31/09) Central State Ohio. I am very proud to have created a successful format, Urban/Jazz 1986 c, and managed a great radio station for 24 years. Logan made history in 1971 in the all nite show at WDAO-FM, playing Funk music for first time in Dayton, Ohio while at WDAO-FM [1976 to1983]. Turk Logan program director had the highest radio ratings in the history of Dayton radio a 25.7 share of the market in 1980. Dr. Logan was a Professor of Communications at one of the nation’s oldest private HBCUs, Wilberforce University (1993 to 2010). He is President/CEO of Logan Communications/Publishing and Logan Entertainment, Inc. Logan Publishing has published the following books: Rap, Ritual, and Reality: Violent Music Makes Violent Kids; The Reality of a Fantasy (an autobiography); and The Academy of Broadcasting. He is producing a film called The Soul of Dayton, the story of his life in Dayton radio.

Ayaan Natala is an aspiring research-scholar-activist, who grew up in Minnesota (Mni Sota), also known as Ojibwe/Dakota land. She was raised by a South-side Chicagoan mother and Zambian father in the Twin Cities; as a result, she is passionate about the African diaspora. She is a member of the Critical Black Studies cohort at the University of Minnesota’s American Studies Department, where she studies Black feminism, Black radicalism, and social movements. Her dissertation explores how Black Lives Matter organizing influenced Black Minnesotans’ reflections on freedom within the context of their life histories. She seeks to understand how the 2020 historic moment of social movement mobilization influences Black residents, activists, and community leaders’ conceptions of freedom–and how they struggle to make those visions a reality. Aside from academics, Ayaan is passionate about health and wellness, nature, and creating a soundtrack for her next travel adventure.

Elliott H. Powell is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota. His work sits at the intersections of race, sexuality, and popular music. He is the author of Sounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music (University of Minnesota Press, 2020), which received the Woody Guthrie Book Award from the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (US-Branch) as well as the American Musicological Society’s Philip Brett Book Award. He’s currently at work on a book titled Erotic City, which examines the intertwined worlds of music and sex in Minneapolis during the 1980s.

Miss Priss hails from and reigns in (312) CHI-CAGO, the birthplace of HOUSE. In 1971 AD, Newborn Priss was delivered and placed upon a table. The table became a dance floor. With the first fluttering blinks of her eyes, the hospital’s glaring, bright lights became strobe lights. She took her first breath and released a resounding wail, exclaiming “IT’S HOUSE!”

Miss Priss along with practically the entire youth community of Chicago listened to the inescapable sounds of HOUSE music while being engulfed in HOUSE culture by way of AM/FM radio, roller rinks, sock hops, hotel grand ballrooms, churches, underground venues and of course in people’s houses. Exuding HOUSE continues to be a full time commitment for Miss Priss as she embodies what HOUSE means to Chicago and how it is perceived and received by the rest of the world. A “muse”, an “enigma”, and “dance floor assassin”, Miss Priss is the personification of HOUSE. She represents a comprehensive, immersive cultural experience through sight, sound, feelings and movement.

Nicole Pritchett is a dynamic influence in music and the creative mind behind 30 Days Productions (https://www.30daysproductions.com/) . With a deep-rooted passion for music and a commitment to fostering local talent, Nicole has established herself as a prominent figure in the Dayton music scene.

As a lyricist and producer, Nicole’s journey in music is marked by her relentless pursuit of excellence and her ability to connect with artists on a profound level. She stands in a unique position in Dayton as her perspective stems from experiencing the evolution of Dayton funk into the hip hop scene. (Here’s the story: https://youtu.be/7NAhIFf_TSQ) As a co-writer for Bossman and Blakjak, her works have been nominated for a Soul Train Music Award. Through 30 Days Productions, she remains at the forefront of musical excellence, continually shaping the future of music in Dayton and beyond.

Jess Reed (she/her/hers) is a daughter, sister, friend, storyteller, and ice cream lover from Detroit, Michigan. She is also a Ph.D. student in the Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education program at Michigan State University. She enjoys genuine conversations, asking deep questions, and archiving memories of people and places. In 2021, she founded Craft Your Courage, a holistic writing support company that helps individuals with authentic expression. Reed also released her debut book, Roots & Hope: Ruminations on Loneliness and Deep Connectedness, in May 2023.

Dr. Sutton’s research focuses on the histories of slavery and freedom in the U.S., with a particular interest in African American women’s history and the Midwest. She is currently working on a book project that chronicles Black women’s transition from slavery to freedom in rural antebellum Indiana and the ways in which they expressed their ideas of citizenship through freedom suits, anti-slavery activism, and material culture. Her recent publications include an article in the Digital Humanities Quarterly titled “Reaping the Harvest: Using Descendant Archival Practices to Create Sustainable Digital Archives with Rural Black Women” and two digital history projects: “Remembering Freedom: Longtown and Greenville History Harvest,” an open-access digital archive and “The Black Midwest at Miami University,” a student-created digital archive and website.

DeMar Walker is a multidisciplinary artist & educator from Milwaukee. His work centers the embodied practices of Black social, cultural, and political life in the Midwestern United States. He holds a Master’s Degree in English from Marquette University. He has directed, choreographed & performed for numerous local and international performing arts organizations, including Ko-Thi Dance Company, Danceworks Milwaukee, Black Arts Milwaukee, Wildspace Dance Company, First Stage Children’s Theatre, Fleeing Artists Theatre, Camp Bagatae, & Ecole Des Sables. He once served as a dance lecturer at the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In Fall 2020, his dance short film The Beckoning was awarded Best Film & Best Director at the Milwaukee International Short Film Festival and Best Dance Performance at the Black Lives Rising Dance Festival. He has written for Arts Midwest, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service. Most recently, he was a programming consultant for the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD) conference “Body Geographies|Mapping Freedoms.” DeMar also contributes to the publication Black in The Middle: An Anthology of the Black Midwest.

Pascale Ife Williams, PhD is a cultural organizer, educator, disruptor, healing justice practitioner, and scholar. Ife is a Chicago native with over 15 years of experience in justice-driven arts and community-engaged work that explores and engages racial, gender, and wellness equity. She invites communities to co-design their realities through radical imagination, strategic visioning, and creative healing practices.

Ife is a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the School of Human Ecology: Civil Society and Community Research PhD program (December 2022). As founder and former member of the Healing & Safety Council in BYP100 (byp100.org) and the P.O.W.E.R Collective (University of Wisconsin-Madison), she continues to facilitate spaces for communities to imagine and realize preventative care models, transform conflict, and be in principled struggle together through healing justice principles. Ife has also been integral in supporting a number of cultural initiatives, such as the City of Chicago’s inaugural Healing Arts Chicago, RE-TOOL 21, and the Creative Lab for Cultural Leaders (CLCL) at the School of the Art Institute Chicago. Ife currently works as an independent community researcher and cultural scholar, documenting and celebrating LGBTQIA present histories. Ife also serves as Senior Engagement Fellow for the Terra Foundation for American Arts. 2023-2023 has been abundant with the awarding of two Fellowships, which include the Chicago Black Midwest Institute Summer Fellows at the University of Illinois and In-Session Artist Fellow at ThreeWalls.

In addition to her work practice, Ife’s biological and chosen family are most precious to her. Her child Kamari and all her nibblings (a gender-neutral term for nieces and nephews) are a constant source of humility, inspiration, and laughter.

Nashville native Countess V. Winfrey currently serves as a performer, teaching artist, choreographer, and rehearsal director for The Dayton Contemporary Dance Company. Winfrey attended the University of Memphis, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.S. in Health and Human Performance and a minor in Dance. Countess has performed nationally and internationally in Bermuda, China, Kazakhstan, and Russia. She has had the privilege of performing works by acclaimed choreographers, including Talley Beatty, Rennie Harris, Paul Taylor, Dwight Rhoden, Ron K. Brown, Donald McKayle, Ray Mercer, and many more. Additionally, she has taught and choreographed for various institutions throughout the Midwest, including DCDC, DCDC2, Ohio State University, Miami University, The School for Creative and Performing Arts in Cincinnati, Ohio University, and the Regional Dance Association. Her most recent commissions include the world premiere of “Homage: What Was, Is, To Come” (commissioned by the Cincinnati Art Museum and Ohio Dance, 2022) and “Somewhere, They Freed Themselves” (commissioned by Mutual Dance Theater, 2023). Winfrey will be entering her tenth season dancing with the professional company and her twelfth year with the organization.

Chicago’s inaugural Poet Laureate, interdisciplinary artist avery r. young [him, him, his] is an inaugural Walder’s Foundation Platform awardee, and recipient of the American Poet Laureate Fellow.  A co-director of The Floating Museum, his poetry, performance and composition have been featured and/or commissioned in several journals, exhibitions and operas.  He is the composer and librettist for a new commissioned work from The Lyrics Opera of Chicago titled safronia.  HIs full length recording tubman. is the soundtrack to his collection of poetry, neckbone: visual verses.